Currently, solid state storage systems do not natively return soft information when reading stored information. In one example, NAND Flash systems return either a 1 or 0 (i.e., hard read values) when a cell is read using a particular read threshold. Some NAND Flash systems synthesize soft information from the returned hard read values so that soft input decoders (such as soft input low-density parity-check (LDPC) decoders) can be used in the storage system. New techniques for generating soft read values would be desirable, for example so that higher quality soft read values are obtained, decoding by a soft input error correction decoder faster, and/or less storage is required.